


Witch and Warrior

by Felle



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-01-19 02:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12401412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle
Summary: Aleksandra of the endangered Zaryanov clan needs the help of a witch who's taken up in the nearby woods, and she isn't going to let anything get in her way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moonwatcher13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonwatcher13/gifts).



Aleksandra checked the straps on her pack once more at the edge of the forest, gazing steadfastly into the knot of trees that became too dense to see through at thirty paces. How many times had she gone into the forest, she wondered, to hunt or to draw crisp, fresh water from the clear rivers that snaked over the ground without picking up a mote of silt. More times than anyone else in her clan, to be sure. Perhaps more times than everyone else put together. But on that day, as she made sure her bow and arrows were fastened in their proper place and her food was wrapped tight so as not to tempt any lurking predators, she wasn’t venturing in to hunt, or to find water.

That day, Aleksandra needed to find a witch.

Few people in her clan would say as much to her face, but she knew most of them thought her a fool for believing that old story, little more than a tale used to frighten children. The witch came to the bedside of those who misbehaved, so parents would relate to their young children, smelling of hollyhock and apples, before snatching them up and dragging them into the dark depths of the forest that bordered their territory, where they were turned into trees. It had cowed her into obedience as a girl, though it stopped holding sway when her inevitable misbehavior was met with nothing more than scolding. Still, the story had to come from _somewhere_ —more grounded tales from passing traders described great healers and herbalists who made their homes in forests, both to be near their supplies and to keep away from misinformed people who mistook their skills for darker fare.

If there was a witch, or a healer, or whatever she was in their forest, Aleksandra was going to find her, and find a way to heal their clan’s battlemaster, their defender and her mentor. Their own healers had failed to find a solution for what ailed her, so truly there was no choice but to put a face to their old legend. She pulled the straps on her pack taut and set foot inside the forest.

It wasn’t as foreboding as young children were told to keep them away. There were paths where the grass had worn down, pockets of light where the sun breached the canopy of trees above, and even some old signs indicating the way out in the shallower parts. Water ran nearby from one of the smaller streams, and fallen leaves and twigs crunched underfoot of the animals that lived there. A place very much alive, and very much indifferent to her presence.

Aleksandra followed the main path, the largest one from which the others split. Some led to small hunting blinds with slits for an arrow to fly from, while others simply looped back on themselves. She took none of those and continued on the main path, toward the heart of the forest.

When the sun was beginning to set and the moon hadn’t yet risen in the sky, Aleksandra stopped and sat on a root of a massive oak tree, ponderously inclined from some terrible, ancient wind. She staked her torch into the soil and struck at it with her flint and fire steel until the end caught light. With no desire to linger and let the new shadows play tricks on her mind, she unwrapped a helping of boar meat from her pack and ate it quickly, too quickly to appreciate the taste as she would have preferred. Aleksandra tossed the gristle far on the other side of the path and tore into the small, misshapen loaf of bread that the baker had rejected. She was very nearly done, ravenously hungry from a day of trekking further and further into the forest, when a small rabbit scurried toward her feet, nose turned up at the scent of food.

A small heel of bread wouldn’t make a difference. She laid the rest of it between her feet, took her torch, and set off again.

It was the same path she had been on, but as it narrowed and began showing signs of overgrowth at the sides, Aleksandra’s thoughts started to turn away from where they had been all day. An enormous buck with antlers to match crossed her path, ambling along without a care in the world or a scrap of attention spared for her. She reached by reflex for her bow, but let it hang on her pack. Hunting could wait until another trip into the forest. If the witch was as powerful as the stories told, surely the buck was a trick to make her stray.

The other tricks were not so kind. Sudden images of her battlemaster breathing her last, or their clan coming under attack without a proper defense, crept into her mind, taking hold with such vivid images she could swear she was truly seeing it as it happened. Aleksandra shook her head and stared down at the path, forcing one foot down in front of the other, even as her gut roiled and her heart tugged in the opposite direction. What was the point of going by herself and leaving everyone behind when the forest had swallowed so many—

As quickly as the thoughts had come on, they receded, as if she had been plunged into icy water to snap her out of a bout of drunkenness. Every step was no longer a battle, and the moon had risen while she had been focused on her feet, casting a pale and eerie light around her even while the canopy overhead was impossibly thick.

Aleksandra snuffed her torch, but held it as a club in case any wolves were aprowl. She noticed, slowly, that the chaotic knot of what looked like apple trees around her began to have order imposed on their growth, standing in neat rows with a headstone at the foot of each. Chills ran down her spine as she gazed around the orchard and settled on a faint pinprick of candlelight in a small hut.

The door shuddered as she knocked on it, hinges rattling under her hand. At first there was no answer, and then it swung open, seemingly of its own accord. More candles inside threw their light in garish ways over the single room, and Aleksandra was cautious when she stepped over the threshold. Her fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife on her waist, but she kept from drawing it yet.

“Do you think you’re going to need that?”

Aleksandra lost her grip in surprise, whirling around to try and place the oddly-accented voice. The thump in her chest softened when her gaze settled on a table set just under the window in which she had seen the first trace of light. In one of the chairs was a woman nursing a drink, no more than ten years older than her if she had to guess, with golden hair drawn back so that only a few light locks spilled over her shoulders. Her clothes were a snug brown leather, but lacked any obvious fastenings or clasps. It seemed that she had no mind to look at Aleksandra, and she only kept a vigilant, melancholy watch over her moonlit apple orchard. A shame to have such a pretty face that seemed so sad, Aleksandra thought. “You don’t look like a witch,” she said.

“What does a witch look like, Aleksandra of Zaryanov?”

She finally deigned to set eyes on her visitor, her gaze lingering for a moment, while Aleksandra felt her breathing quicken. Her eyes were as blue as fresh, clean water or the afternoon sky, but downcast, tired. Eyes that had seen much. “I don’t know. Maybe they all look like you, I suppose.”

The witch nodded once, then stood and went to a worktable on which were all kinds of herbs and powders. She cut a root with a small knife, mixed it with a white powder in a mortar, and began to grind it together with a pestle. “You came all this way, managed to keep to the path, even fed one of my rabbits, so I will hear you out. Why do you darken my door, little warrior?”

Her _little_ comment made Aleksandra huff—she easily stood head and shoulders above the witch—but she said nothing to answer it. The advantage in the hut belonged to its owner. “You know my name. May I know yours?”

She stopped her mixing for a moment, staring out a window into the darkness behind the hut before resuming. “Names are powerful things, child. You should guard yours more carefully rather than letting it scream out in every step you take through my wood.” Satisfied with her mixture, she carefully poured it into a small glass bottle, where it seemed to glow dimly under its own power. “Angela. That was what the last one called me, long and longer ago.”

“You don’t look that old,” Aleksandra said. The witch turned to her and crossed her arms. “Two and twenty, maybe.”

“And _you_ are very determined to work under your first assumptions. That you happen to be the sixteen years you seem means nothing to me. Time can be friendly to a witch, as long as it isn’t tampered with. I will ask you again: why are you here?”

“My clan’s battlemaster is sick,” she said. “Gravely so. Our healers say they can do nothing for her. I am not ready to stand in her place if another clan attacks ours. I came in search of a cure for her.”

Angela reached into a pouch on her worktable and retrieved a tiny glass vial full of a clear liquid. “Here. Belladonna in a distillation of hemlock.”

She tossed the vial to Aleksandra, who only barely caught it. “This will cure her sickness?”

“No. It will kill her, but painlessly.”

“What?”

The vial struck her boot as she dropped it, but Angela opened her hand before it could roll onto the floor, and suddenly it was there, between her fingers. Aleksandra fumed. “Are you some trickster, witch? I need a cure!”

“A charmed world you live in, little girl, where every illness has a cure,” Angela said. “Death must have its due…potions and poultices may ward it off, as hartshorn salts may rip away sleep, but it comes for us all in the end.”

She took a step toward Angela, who conceded no ground to her. If diplomacy and politeness didn’t get her what she needed, then she could find some other way. “I did not ask for an elixir of immortality—”

“Good, because no such thing exists.”

“—I only seek a cure for a valiant warrior.”

“Valiant?” Angela asked. She matched Aleksandra’s step closer, until she had to crane her neck slightly to look her guest in the eye. “Is that what you call it? The trees and dogs that stray toward your lands tell me of a murderer, with the blood of hundreds on her blade. Men, women and children of your former neighbors, all cut down by this valiant warrior you speak of. Death knows your mentor well, child. She has sent many to its cold embrace. Why should I help you stave off oblivion for her?”

Aleksandra looked down at her, glaring, but had nothing to say in defense of her position. She had hoped, as she walked through the forest, that her determination would be enough to make the witch grant the boon she sought. Instead, Angela had twisted her master’s strength back on itself. What would a witch in the depths of a forest know of neighbors? Angela waved a hand toward her hut’s door, and in the span of a breath all the little noises of the forest fell away, leaving only silence.

“Leave, little warrior. Nothing will accost you, and the path back will be much shorter. You may return if you find an answer to my question. You know the way now.”

She stepped from the hut, back into the moonlit orchard, and began to walk with curse after curse trailing out under her breath. One way or another, she would have to convince the witch. Her power was obvious, Aleksandra only needed to find a way to coax it in the direction she needed. There had to be some way to convince her, and she was going to find it.

As the witch had said, the walk out of the forest was significantly shorter, and in less than half an hour she found the edge of the trees, with her clan’s sentry fires burning as bright points to the north. She looked back into the forest, almost expecting to see a hut lit by candles, but there was nothing there in the darkness. Another trick, proof of her powers. Why flaunt them if she didn’t want to be convinced?

⁂

The route to the orchard didn’t take all day the second time. By Aleksandra’s estimation, it took less than an hour before neat rows of apple trees closed in on the dirt path. With the sun still high, the witch was out planting cuttings in a patch of loamy soil set away from her hut. She stiffened slightly when Aleksandra approached her, but didn’t turn away from her work.

“Can’t you just…magic up what it is that you need?” she asked when they were only a few paces apart.

Angela finally looked over her shoulder with a cocked eyebrow. Still such a shame to have a pretty face look so sad. “You are grossly misinformed about magic, Aleksandra of Zaryanov,” she said, and motioned to a small metal tool out of her reach. “Hand me the trowel, please.”

She did so. Angela carefully took some soil from a loose pile, shook it slightly, and filled in the space around her newest planting. “There. Gardening can be very calming, you know. Especially for someone already bursting with motivation to try and change my mind.”

“I—”

“Yes, yes, you’ve come seeking a cure for your clan’s battlemaster, an accomplished murderer. If you mean to try and sway me, then at least help me with the rest of these plantings.”

Aleksandra scoffed. “The only gardeners in our clan are the people too young or too old to tend animals or fight.”

“Then sit there with your pride, little warrior, if you think it will ingratiate you to me.”

She frowned, shifted her weight from foot to foot, and knelt down beside the witch.

Angela showed her how deep to dig, how to aerate the soil, and the way to seat the plantings so they would get the most sunlight. It became routine after a few repetitions, like a sword form. In return Aleksandra spoke of her battlemaster, of the times when she could be soft. Of the sickly children she took into her home rather than let them succumb to exposure.

“And you were one of those sickly babes,” Angela said, without any question in it.

“I was.”

“That sounds more an indictment of your parents than an extolling of your battlemaster, but at least your determination finally has some sense to it. Not many people would seek me out, let alone twice. But saving a life does not entitle one to take another. Even if it did, the scale would not tip in her favor.”

Aleksandra frowned and continued with her recollections, of the mercy shown to their defeated neighbors who could join them if they had not taken up arms in battle. She spoke of how many balked at the notion before her battlemaster quelled those arguments, how she dispensed justice without regard to standing or influence. She spoke until her voice ran hoarse and she was barely able to make her request for a cure. The witch only shook her head and escorted her to the edge of the orchard.

“I will come back,” Aleksandra said.

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

And she returned, every day, earlier and earlier. Once she came upon the witch still in her washbasin, soaked through—she made sure to knock on the hut’s door after that. Angela deigned to hear more tales of Aleksandra’s battlemaster, of her wisdom and compassion, in return for her help around the orchard and her home. A witch’s hut needed a great deal of upkeep, it seemed. There were leaks in the roof to patch, new shelves to put up, even a tree trunk to rip up once. Every day, when the sun hung low through the trees, Aleksandra would ask for a cure, and every day Angela would shake her head. Some days she walked with her through the forest, once she even came to the very edge of the trees, but never followed beyond that.

On the eighteenth day, Aleksandra came with no tales of valor or kindness, only a heavy heart in her chest and tears in her eyes. The witch was at one of her trees, standing on her toes while she tried to pluck an apple, but stopped when she saw her visitor. “Back again? Help me get this apple, I’m hungry—”

“You knew,” Aleksandra spat, striking the tree with her fist and making the whole trunk shudder. “You knew she was going to die last night and you sent me off like any other day. Did you make her linger long enough for me to return in time to see the life go out of her? Are you that cruel?”

Angela looked sadly up at her and beckoned for Aleksandra to follow her back to the hut. They walked in silence, Aleksandra still biting back tears as she went inside and took an offered seat at the table.

“I did nothing,” Angela said. She opened one of her airtight cabinets and removed a plate of plum pudding that she set on the table with a spoon fashioned from a branch of oak. “Eat.”

She did, but only because she had been too sick for breakfast and felt her stomach rumbling. It was moist and sweet, and Aleksandra would have enjoyed it if not for the cloud hanging over her. Angela sat opposite her with two mugs, one she put beside the plate of pudding. “I _could_ do nothing, as I told your battlemaster when she beseeched me. Death must have its due, as I said the first night you came to me. She grasped that much faster than you.”

Aleksandra furrowed her brow. “She hadn’t been out of her tent in almost two months. Unless you came within our walls?”

“No, my place is here in the wood,” Angela said. “But she laid out a proper offering, hollyhock and apples, before she slept one night. Her dreams were easy to find. When I told her that her illness was beyond any treatment I could offer, she made a different request. A request that I remind her successor of the wisdom and compassion that her position requires.”

“But…” Aleksandra looked down at her lap and the new sword on her belt. “ _I_ am her successor. You did nothing of the sort.”

Angela picked up her mug, swirled the tea inside, and took a small mouthful. “Why would I lecture you on the things you already knew? That seems like an excellent way to make someone your age not listen. But giving you an opportunity to come here, day after day, and lend an ear while you taught yourself?”

One hand tightened on the hilt of the sword hanging on her hip. No, not just a sword, Aleksandra realized. A shield, a spade, a guide’s walking stick—whatever it was her clan needed. “Then perhaps I should thank you,” she said.

“Serve your people well. That will be thanks enough, battlemaster.”

The witch smiled at her, really smiled, and for once there was no sadness around her eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

The coolness in the air was growing the same bite it had every year as autumn began fading into winter when Aleksandra came back to her cottage. No, that wasn’t precisely the right way to think about it, Angela thought. Her little battlemaster had fallen out of the habit of coming by once or twice a week for about a month, but before that she had been a frequent visitor.

But that day, as Angela plucked apples from her grove to make more hot cider, she felt no lightness in Aleksandra’s steps along the path as she might have when she came for herself, and neither did she feel any urgency as when she came to seek medicine for a sick child. Her steps were slow and heavy and plaintive, like a lament so starkly out of place among the rustling leaves and chirping birds.

Angela stamped one heel into the ground and heard the successful crackle of a fire in her hearth. She kept on with her harvesting until Aleksandra’s shape emerged from the trees that obscured the winding path, and then drifted away from her trees and walked out to meet her a bit away from the cottage. The battlemaster of Zaryanov was as tall and imposing as ever, wrapped in silver furs from her broad shoulders to her waist, where her sword hung from its heavy leather belt. Her faintly red hair had taken in the sun from a warm summer, and seemed tinged almost pink in places. But her eyes, usually such a pleasant and welcoming green, were dull and downcast, her mouth was set in a frown, and one heavy hand rested on the hilt of her sword. Angela nodded wordlessly toward her cottage, and they walked side by side. Aleksandra shortened her steps so they would keep pace, and hauled the basket of apples up on her shoulders when they passed it.

The fire had warmed up the small space by the time they got inside, and Angela set what remained of her cider over the hearth while Aleksandra set the basket down and took a seat at the table. Once, she had been clambering and awkward in the confined quarters, but lately she moved with easy and practiced grace, though with her temperament as it was her movements only made her seem smaller. Angela took the cider from its place over the fire and poured it into the enormous mug she had made for her guest. The drink was gone in one swift mouthful as Angela sat across from her. There was a heavy, almost interminable silence hanging in the air before Aleksandra spoke.

“You were wrong,” she said, her voice still thick with the cider.

“It happens. About what was I wrong, my dear battlemaster?”

“The negotiations with the Omick. They failed.”

All Angela’s breath left her as surely as if she had been struck in the chest. The Omick were a difficult tribe at the best of times and ruthless at worst, from what the forest’s animals had whispered to her. The Zaryanov were not wanting in fierceness, but stood to lose much more, with so much of their harvest still in their fields.

“I see,” Angela said simply, steepling her fingers for lack of something productive to do with them. “I’m sure you did all you could.”

Aleksandra hummed in acknowledgement. “I tried. All the things you told me, I tried them. I still failed. Their price was past the point of reason.”

“There’s to be war, then?” Angela asked, full of trepidation. She had resisted the urge to peek within the walls of the Zaryanov, but she thought that perhaps she should have, if they had been building up for conflict with winter’s icy grip so near. “Well. You have the support of more tribes and a sharp enough mind to undo whatever plan the Omick manage to cobble together.”

“No.”

“No? But—”

“I will not lead my people into war when they should be splitting firewood and reaping our fields,” Aleksandra said. Her grip tightened around her mug, and the clay groaned in protest. “The other tribes are only sending people to observe. I challenged their battlemaster to single combat.”

Angela caught the gasp crossing over her lips in time to stifle it, but she might as well have let it go with the way the rest of her reacted. Her shoulders hunched, her brow knitted up, and there was no concealing the frown her mouth twisted into.

“It should be half a year or more until they manage to pick a new battlemaster, they make a blood sport of it,” Aleksandra was saying. “They won’t accept one who surrenders. I win, they go back.”

“Or they burn your tribe to the ground if you lose.” Angela heard the high, frantic pitch in her voice, but had no thought to temper it. “Death would be the kindest fate waiting for them.”

“The same would happen if we lost a proper war.”

A thousand thoughts and more ran through Angela’s head, and she had to pick one to focus down to. Perhaps Angela could reason her out of the more foolish parts of her plan. “This Omick battlemaster—I know of him. I know the game he makes of his victories, how he demands to take each nightly drink from a new skull. There is no ruth in him, and he will not surrender only to be torn apart by his own people.”

“My sword to his throat will be all the persuasion I need.”

“Aleksandra,” she said, reaching out with one hand to touch at her wrist, “I fear I may have been…intemperate in guiding you these past eight years. There is a time to value life, your commitment to its sanctity is laudable. But there are also times when you must value your own life and the lives of your tribe over others. This is such a time. I implore you, if you are determined to see this through with single combat, do not try and force a surrender. You have to kill your enemy. Do not give them a chance to do something underhanded or disavow their agreement to abide by the results. They _will_ fight to the death—so must you.”

The dissonance on her face was painful to watch, but Angela could stand inflicting a little pain if it meant keeping Aleksandra alive. “We will see,” she said.

Angela sighed. “You seem committed to this, so you haven’t come for my counsel. Did you come here just to make me worry?”

“Do you worry about me often?”

A flush of red surfaced on Angela’s face as she withdrew her hand and tucked it into her lap. “Of course I do,” she mumbled. “Your duty is fighting, I would be foolish not to worry. Now truly, what brings you all the way here when you have such important preparations to make?”

“I wanted to ask for your blessing,” Aleksandra said, “in case I…need it.”

Angela frowned. The magic Aleksandra still seemed to believe in simply didn’t exist, not the way she thought of it. How many times had she tried explaining what she could do, only to have it promptly misunderstood? Well. She wasn’t completely useless. She stood, and Aleksandra followed. “Kneel, please.”

She did, and Angela pressed one hand to the crown of her head. The flames of the candles around her cottage flickered, as did the fire in her hearth. Her brow furrowed, and Angela poured slightly more of her own energy than was wise into a ward, the strongest one she had to give. “May your feet be sure, your steel true, and your will resolute,” Angela said, fighting to keep her fatigue from showing. “You can stand now.”

Aleksandra towered over her again after a moment, and Angela only had a moment before she was pulled into a very warm, very secure embrace. It was just as well, her legs were nearly ready to give way. She wasn’t going to let herself grow attached again, that was what she had told herself when she’d set down in the forest. Never again. That thought died a swift death as she snaked her arms around Aleksandra’s broad frame and squeezed, turning her head to one side so she could breathe.

“Thank you,” Aleksandra said when they finally eased back from one another. Suddenly she seemed so ungainly again, and her sword bumped against the frame of the door as they left the cottage. “Will you walk back with me?”

Angela nodded. She walked, but found no words to share. Everything in her was given over to worry. When Aleksandra left her at the forest’s edge and Angela had a chance to observe the Zaryanov lands, she saw their main gate shut tight and guards prowling on the ramparts. There was none of their usual revelry or cheer, only a sobering heaviness that hung in the air like a cloud.

She didn’t sleep that night, or the next. Going to the edge of the forest at midday and seeing nothing only made her worry deepen. The days dragged on and on, but no one set foot in her forest. Her hair grew messy and unkempt, her apples rotted on their trees, and one night seemed to slip right into another with barely any daylight in between. Some days she had no thought to drag herself from her small bed and only tossed and turned, restless. Those days were when she admonished herself for letting herself grow attached, when she told herself she should have remained coldly aloof or retreated so deep into the forest that no one would have ever found her. A loneliness she chose would have been less painful than one that was imposed, she told herself.

It was on one such day when there came a slow, heavy knock on her door. Angela nearly fell out of her bed in surprise, so given over to her fretting that she hadn’t bothered to reach out through the roots and take note of any travelers in her wood. There was no time to compose herself, and doing so never crossed her mind as she stumbled to the door and threw it open. The smile growing on her lips faded when she saw Aleksandra on her doorstep, eyes red with tears and bleeding from a pair of cuts over her left brow. Angela ushered her in without a word and set her down at the table while she began mixing a salve to dull the sting and stop the bleeding.

“I was worried,” she admitted as she ground her pestle into its mortar. Aleksandra was silent. “I suppose you knew that already. How could I not be when you disappear for another week? Still…your tribe was still standing and your fields were unburnt, I knew I had to trust you to take care of things on your own.”

“I did everything,” Aleksandra said, barely breathing the words. “Didn’t I?”

“What?”

Angela brought the salve to the table and set the second chair beside her guest. She took a clean, flat piece of wood and began applying her mixture, drawing out a wince before Aleksandra continued. “I tried everything I could think of,” she said in a terribly flat voice that made Angela’s heart twist painfully. “I shattered his sword, but then he lunged at me with the broken hilt in one hand and a dagger in the other. I crushed his fingers, struck until I heard the bones snap, but he kept trying to strike me. He wouldn’t yield.”

“I told you as much.”

“I broke his arms, crushed his nose, beat him bloody with the flat of my sword—it didn’t matter. He kept coming. Even after I crushed his knees he stood up, his face twisting with pain, and he still lunged. I had to,” Aleksandra said, looking down at the table with glazed eyes. “I had to run him through. There would have been no end to it otherwise.”

Angela didn’t say again that she had warned Aleksandra thusly. There was no point in picking at that wound. She only salved the cuts over her eye. They would scar, but somehow she doubted Aleksandra would mind that very much.

“Did I do the right thing?” she asked, slumping in her seat and closing her eyes. Even without peering into her thoughts, the anguish on her face was as plain and clear as any firelight, cutting deep enough that Angela wondered whether she could counsel her out of it at all. “Did I, Angela?”

She started. They so rarely used each other’s names, there was barely ever any need. She set her salve down and laid one hand on her battlemaster’s broad shoulder. “Are you safe? Are your people, your homes, your lands all safe?”

“Yes.”

“Then you did the right thing, Aleksandra. Let your strength to dissuade when it can, but where it can’t…the kennel master does not try to reason with a rabid dog. He puts it down and sheds a tear when the rest are safe. If you refuse to use that strength when you must, then all those carts you pull and all those calves you lift over your head are of little use.” Angela tapped at the hard, solid muscle of Aleksandra’s arm, a few more times than was necessary to make her point. “You had an ideal, and I laud you for that. But ideals wither and die in the real world. As the protector of your people, you were pragmatic and decisive, and I would laud you for that as well. Better some Omick blood on your hands than ash from Zaryanov fields.”

Angela paused for a moment to take a breath and realized she still had her hand on Aleksandra’s arm. She drew it back and sighed. “That must sound cold. But you were in the right. I will not begrudge you your grief, but it must be a private thing. Your people need a strong leader to see them through the winter.”

Slowly, Aleksandra opened her eyes, and her gaze flitted first to the spot on her arm that Angela had touched, and then to the woman herself. Her back and posture straightened out as she nodded, though the frown never left her face. “This place,” she said, in a more even tone than before, “is it private enough?”

“Of course.” Angela stood and tapped her heel into the floor. The fruit on a few of the trees outside swelled bright and full again, as fresh as the peak of ripeness. “Let me get some fresh apples for the cider.”

As she usually did, Aleksandra insisted on helping her. What protests Angela had faded as she considered the benefit of slipping back into a routine for her guest. More gingerly than other times, taking care not to worsen the little cuts and bruises under her clothes, Aleksandra grabbed the trees by their trunks and shook them mightily until they relinquished their fruit, dropping like so many reddened leaves. When she was done, they picked up the fallen apples and piled them into a basket that Aleksandra hoisted over one shoulder to carry to the next tree.

Angela steered their conversation to talk of the coming winter, to the state of the tribe’s larders and the work in their fields, reaping what remained to be harvested. The warm summer had left few ill, and even some of the younger children were eager to help their parents and older siblings in the fields or putting together thicker clothes for the cold. Those who were unable to help with the heavier work wove wreaths and garlands for the celebration the tribe threw on the heart of winter, the shortest day of the year when all the tribe’s new couples would be married.

“Not a tradition I’ve heard of elsewhere, but interesting,” Angela said as she picked up an apple and shined it on her sleeve. Then, in a gentler, more inquisitive voice, she asked, “Will you be among that number?”

“A battlemaster must devote themselves to the whole tribe,” Aleksandra said after a moment. There was something in her voice, something under her words, but Angela couldn’t puzzle it out. “We do not marry.”

“I see.”

By then there were far too many apples even for a dozen helpings of cider. They took the apples inside, and when they had more than enough for the night Angela perched two mugs over her fire. They grew silent as they drank and stayed that way as they took supper. Angela sat on the side of her bed and beckoned her guest over. She would let Aleksandra grieve, for her innocence if not her fallen foe.

Her bed creaked under the weight of both of them as Aleksandra sat down beside her and slumped into Angela’s waiting shoulder. Tears stained her sleeve, but they were easily washed away another time. For the moment, for the hours she lingered there, Angela let her cry, let her finally work through the reality of what her position entailed. An old memory came to her, unbidden, and Angela tapped her heel to the floor to make some of her chimes outside accompany the mournful hum that worked up from her chest.

“What is that?” Aleksandra asked, her face still buried in the crook of Angela’s neck. Her shuddering stopped for a moment, her curiosity outweighing her sadness.

“A warrior’s song I first heard in Pannonia, when I tended the soldiers there after their battles. Older than you. Older than your tribe, I would wager. For mourning and remembering their lost.”

Aleksandra nodded. “It must be late.”

“Well past dark.”

“I shouldn’t impose on you any longer—”

Her voice cut away sharply as Angela wrapped her arms around her. “I need to check your cut in the morning anyway. You can be strong for your people tomorrow, my battlemaster.”

No more convincing was necessary. Aleksandra cried and Angela hummed her dirge, leaning into one another until sleep took them both where they sat.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a bright, crisp day that saw Aleksandra heading deep into the forest beyond the walls of her tribe.

Of all the places where Aleksandra felt safe, eight years ago she never would have guessed that the forest would ever count among them. Every step on a path or off felt sure-footed, the shadows that lingered around the trees and in the undergrowth no longer stirred her nerves, and even the animals that were as large as her or larger gave her no trouble. Indeed, some of the deer that skirted along the paths would stop to approach her, eager for an apple or a few berries from her pouch.

Though she hadn’t neglected in keeping her tribe safe, either. Their fields and the roads they maintained were well-known as the safest in the region, so much so that many people felt fine venturing beyond the walls without an escort. Others flocked to their tribe, impressed with the strength of the Zaryanov, and brought with them skills that made the tribe stronger still. Their only constant adversaries—anyone else trying to stand against them fell back when they saw the number of allies the Zaryanov could call—were the Omick, and Aleksandra had them down to a simple routine. Whatever battlemaster they propped up from among their ranks could inevitably be goaded into facing her in single combat, such was their need to show their strength. And once Aleksandra delivered their head to the Omick gates, she could count on a few seasons of respite before another threat surfaced from within their lands.

She shook such thoughts out of her head for the moment. Her tribe was safe, even without her there every minute of the day. The lieutenants she had trained were hard, strong warriors, and she was confident in entrusting the tribe to her care during the times she took away from the walls.

But today wasn’t any ordinary venture into the forest for counsel or spiced wine. Today she was sneaking in.

Angela had mentioned the year prior, very offhandedly, that her birthday had passed a month before she ever thought to bring it up. Even though some of her other comments seemed to suggest that she had seen more than her share, Aleksandra still wanted to do something for her this year. She wasn’t entirely sure of her own birthday, and counted another year to herself on the winter solstice like everyone else—but it didn’t seem right to pass Angela’s day so quietly when she could do something instead.

Soon enough she came upon the grove at the heart of the forest, and the cottage she occasionally helped to repair or expand when Angela would let her. The witch herself was off at the far side of one field, tending the crops and medicinal plants that seemed to have no trouble growing with so little sunlight. Aleksandra doubted whether she could actually slip underneath Angela’s notice, but she crept toward the cottage anyway, and went unaccosted all the way to the door. Safely inside, Aleksandra set down her satchel and looked around at what she had to work with. Even lacking any talent in the kitchen, surely she could come up with something simple and celebratory.

Surely.

⁂

“Something’s burning.”

The voice froze Aleksandra in place until she had to cough to get the stench of smoke out of her nose. She turned, a nervous grin alight on her face, to where Angela was leaning against the cottage’s threshold. Her hair was loose, messy sheets of gold spilling down over her shoulders, and she was thankfully smiling. “I’m glad you didn’t set the house on fire, but it certainly smells like you were making a good effort to do so.”

“I’m not much good with good with anything other than a sword, I fear,” Aleksandra admitted, and held up the pestle she had been trying to work some flour with.

Angela chuckled with a shake of her head and closed the door behind her before going up to wrap Aleksandra in a tight embrace. “You were away for a long time, my little battlemaster.”

Aleksandra put the pestle aside and squeezed back. No matter how others wheezed and panicked when she hugged them, Angela never seemed to mind her strength. “I’m two heads taller than you. And only a walk away, I would be happy to host you. More than a few people already think I spend too much time in the forest instead of in the tribe.”

Their hug ended at that, with Angela stepping back as her mouth creased into a frown. “I have no wish to impose my presence upon your people. Some, like you, may understand what I am…most would not.”

“We’ll never know, with the way you stay out here.”

“I know,” Angela said, and went to the counter where the remains of Aleksandra’s attempt at baking lay. “Their languages and clothes and gods may change, but most people are all the same. Afraid of anything that lies beyond their narrow understanding of the world. What were you making here, exactly…?”

Aleksandra scratched at the back of her neck. “It was supposed to be a pie.”

“Well, you made a valiant effort.” Angela piled everything into the backing pan and tucked it into a cupboard. The air hummed around them, and Aleksandra was sure that her sorry attempts were being salvaged as best they could be. Angela nodded toward the bottle on the table. “The ale seems fine.”

That was as good a cue as any, and Aleksandra took two cups and sat on one side of the table. Angela took the remaining chair and brought it next to her while she poured out the ale and slid one cup over. “A happy birthday to you,” Aleksandra said.

“What? Oh, that’s today, isn’t it? I’m surprised you remembered, I haven’t done anything for it in a long time. Well, thank you.”

Angela took a sip of her drink and let out a long sigh as it began to spread through her. “The pie should be fixed in a few moments. Have you ever had peach pie?”

“What’s peach?” Aleksandra asked.

“A lovely, juicy thing they grow in Serica and Hispania. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

The air hummed once more with an energy beyond Aleksandra’s understanding, and Angela slipped over to her cupboard. She removed a still-steaming pie despite the lack of any heat, and yet had no trouble touching the baking pan with her bare hands. Over the years she had become much more comfortable with casual displays of her power in plain view, and it never failed to play at Aleksandra’s nerves when she was reminded of just what her friend was capable of.

“Here we are, nice and hot.”

She cut two slices at the counter and brought them over. Aleksandra took a bit off the end to try, then nearly melted at the taste. “Oh…please tell me we can grow these here.”

“Sib Ir is too far north, I fear. But that you can grow anything here is a testament to hardiness, so perhaps one day they could grow in this cold. I remember the taste, though, and would be happy to make some for you.”

“I’ll take you up on that.”

For all her affected nonchalance about the topic, Angela seemed quite happy to observe her birthday, smiling all through her pie and keeping up, drink for drink, with Aleksandra as the sun went down and she had to light candles. By then they had moved to opposite sides of her bed, no longer bothering with their mugs and instead passing the bottle of ale back and forth between them.

“Thank you for all of this, my little battlemaster,” Angela said as she twirled one finger to fan the flames in the hearth. There was a cheerful shade of red across her face to go along with her grin. Aleksandra liked that. Too much of the time she only had blank looks to share, or wryness. Happiness was a welcome change. “It’s been a long time since I had someone else to pass my birthday with. Most years I’ve spent it alone. Sometimes the animals would come by, but they’re not much for conversation. And they never bring me ale.”

“Why _do_ you avoid people?” Aleksandra asked, courage bolstered by all the drink in her. “Any tribe would have you, even if they only saw a fraction of your healing power.”

The smile on Angela’s face died, replaced by the merest traces of a frown. “I suppose you’ve earned that much truth…I will not hold it against you if you cannot see me in the same way after this. What do you know of the world beyond this region, Aleksandra?”

“Only the things I hear from you and the traders who come in the summer,” she said. “There’s Muscovy to the west, Serica to the south, and nothing but ice to the north.”

“Yes. And plenty more beyond those places.” Angela tipped her head back over the footboard of her bed and stared at the ceiling. “I am from a place called Sedunum, in Helvetia. It was once part of a grand empire that spanned almost all of Europa. The people there were impressed by the wounds I could heal, too. I was sent away from my family and where they felt I was needed most, north and west, to a great island our overlords were trying to subjugate.”

Her fingertips ran over the wood of the footboard, making the fire nearby grow and fade with each movement. “It was a new settlement, so new that only their most recent maps had included it. And there were plenty of other places nearby so small that no cartographer would bother with them. It was important to keep the people there healthy, you see…soldiers and wealthy citizens who so desperately needed another villa. The capital of that empire was much warmer, and they were concerned with protecting the few people who had volunteered to broaden the borders.”

“You must have been lonely,” Aleksandra said. She handed the bottle over, and Angela took a long draught.

“Oh, yes. My parents weren’t allowed to come with me, I had to go on my own. The people there spoke a strange dialect of Latin that I stumbled over for months. I wasn’t a soldier or a proper citizen, and neither the barracks nor the villas would have me. Finally the governor took me in, though not without grumbling about it. I liked helping the people despite their initial mistrust, and in time they came to value me. Their settlement was doing well eight years or so after I arrived. Hundreds more people came from the capital and expanded the cities that had gone up. The number of children I midwifed, Aleksandra…things were calm, for a time.”

“Until?”

She let out a long breath. “There was another island, to the west of the one the empire had claimed out from under the former inhabitants. Hibernia. The people there had little fondness for their new neighbors, but they did have a…another person like me. Someone gifted. But she cared nothing for helping people, only raw knowledge and the freedom to pursue it. Perhaps she felt threatened, perhaps the Hibernians asked her. I think she was only curious and didn’t care who was hurt. It doesn’t matter much now.”

Angela finished the bottle of ale and set it down on the floor. “People began to die. Only in the western reaches of the settlement at first. That was no great shock, people always die in the end. A soft death at the end of a good life is a kindness I will never know…but then the deaths began to outpace the births, and the governor demanded I go there and do something. He had no wish to report a failure to his superiors in Roma. I went there and offered what help I could, but my abilities only extend so far, as you well know. It was a sickness whose symptoms I had never seen before, I had to stay in a villa that had been abandoned to the ill just to figure out what it was.”

“And what was it?” Aleksandra asked.

“Terrible.”

She shivered, and the air around them trembled through a snapping bite of cold.  “You don’t need to go on—”

“No, I want to,” Angela said. “I want…I need to tell someone. Twenty people died under my care before I had a proper understanding of the disease. Men, women, children all fell in equal number. Too many. By the time someone began showing outward symptoms, it was already too late. Nothing I could do would bring them back over that edge. So I…I did something else. Something evil, really, but at the time I was convinced it was the only way to stop the spread.”

Aleksandra’s lips parted, but no words came. All she could do was watch Angela, take note of all the ways she was closing in on herself: drawing her legs up to her chest, staring adamantly down at the sheets, mumbling as if she were afraid she would be heard.

“I gave the afflicted a choice, you see. The disease was exceedingly painful, and the hemlock I offered them was all but painless by comparison. A slow agony, or a mercy—my brilliant solution.”

“Did it work, at least?”

“No. I had never encountered someone else like me, I had no inkling that a firebreak would be useless against an unnatural disease. All of Londinium was wiped out within the year, either by my hand or that plague. I burned the dead and ran away, but it had already tainted me,” Angela said mournfully. “The sickness had no way of affecting _me_ , but it spread to whoever I came across.”

A knot tightened in Aleksandra’s stomach, and she cursed how plainly she wore her emotions. Angela shook her head, silent tears suspended at the corners of her eyes. “No, you don’t have it. I shut myself away for forty years in an ancient temple to find some way to dispel whatever that other witch had laid over me. That made it…difficult to be around people, I suppose. At least in large doses. Even after I was sure people would no longer die in my wake, I still feared that they would. I always fear it. Every day that I don’t see you here, or through the animals that draw close to your walls, I worry that I may have afflicted you, foolish as the fear may be.”

The tears that had massed rolled down her cheeks, and she stained her sleeve wiping them away. “So,” she said in a voice bearing a new, false confidence, “now you know the awful secret of your witch, the blood of thousands on her hands. I will not hold it against you if you leave now, never seek my counsel again—”

Aleksandra could bear to see her miserable no longer. She reached across the bed and pulled Angela against her, into her arms. No, the world had wronged her witch for inflicting such grief and pain. She was too precious for that, like the lovely little baubles and jewels the traders tried to sell. “Do you think I, of all people, would hold hard, impossible choices against you? I will not pretend to know such horror. But neither will I let you take the blame for another’s cruelty.”

“I have carried that blame for longer than your tribe has existed, little battlemaster,” Angela said as she let herself be crushed against Aleksandra’s chest. She was pleasantly warm, almost radiating heat, and slowly wrapped one hand around Aleksandra’s shoulder. “I _know_ the guilt and fear serve no one. But it is very easy to know one thing and feel another.”

“Then we stay like this, until you feel better.”

Angela huffed out a laugh against her. “I may not need to eat or drink, but you do. Will you carry me everywhere like that sword?” she asked, nudging her head toward the sheathed weapon balanced by the door.

“If I must.”

“You are a stubborn woman, Aleksandra of Zaryanov. I like that about you.”

“I like you, too.”

The words slipped from her mouth without conscious thought, and Aleksandra reached into the air to try and snatch them back. Angela stiffened in her grasp, then worked herself half to freedom with her deceptive strength. She looked up at Aleksandra, who could only grin nervously. “That…that isn’t what you said, is it?”

Angela’s answer was to crane her neck up slightly and press a soft, questioning kiss to Aleksandra’s lips. The air around them surged with energy, nearly crackling, until Angela eased back. Any kind of reply had flown out of Aleksandra’s head, and all she could do was tighten her grip on the witch’s clothes. Her face burned, and was surely red for reasons beyond the ale. “I—you—oh.”

“Does my battlemaster enjoy the company of women?” Angela asked, the tip of her tongue running along her lower lip as one hand stroked Aleksandra’s side.

“I hadn’t given it much thought,” she admitted through a dry throat, though the surge that had run through her had been far from unpleasant. A little nervous sweat rolled down her sides. “My work demands too much, I keep to myself.”

Angela swept her free hand over the cottage. “There are no demands on you now.”

It was a surprisingly strong argument. She slid one hand to the back of Angela’s head, fingers running through the soft golden hair, and kissed her again. Angela matched her enthusiasm, pressing up to her for one kiss, two, three. Heat coiled tight between Aleksandra’s legs, and she squirmed to try and answer it, but Angela was already thinking ahead of her. She broke away first, tying back her hair with a length of fabric from her sleeve before reaching for the hem of Aleksandra’s lightly padded shirt. It, and the furs on top of it, went up and over her head without resistance, and Angela tossed them aside before hooking her fingers into the top of Aleksandra’s trousers. She lingered, tugging just enough to make her presence known, until Aleksandra nodded and propped herself up on her hands. Her pants flew away like the rest of her clothes, but somehow she wasn’t cold. Angela bit down on her lip, and then kissed lightly at Aleksandra’s throat. “Relax…”

Her kisses trailed a slow path down Aleksandra’s body, the crook of her shoulder, the swells of her breasts, the hard plane of her stomach. Each breath was hot and ragged, and Aleksandra had to remember to take every last one as she watched Angela explore her. Angela’s hands went ahead of her mouth, ghosting over her sides and her hips.

There was one more glance from those blue eyes before Angela’s tongue lashed at her, stoking the pressure mounting between her legs. Aleksandra whimpered and watched as Angela closed her eyes, searching slowly for a rhythm as she rocked in time with Aleksandra’s hips. “Right—right there,” she gasped out, and threaded one hand into Angela’s hair as her tongue flicked from side to side.

But Angela wasn’t in any rush. Whenever Aleksandra felt the heavy knot of tension in her start to come undone, Angela slowed her pace, drew back her tongue in favor of strewing kisses along her trembling thighs until Aleksandra had settled. Then she would begin again, working her so, so _close_ that she was half out of her mind by the fourth time.

“Angela,” she said, almost choking on the name as her hands tightened, “please—”

In a more sober moment, she might have cringed at how she sounded, begging like a dog. But reason had left her. She needed one thing, and she didn’t care if she had to beg to get it. Her pleas were mercifully effective, and Angela drew her tongue in a slow swirl that only picked up in speed, stoking the fire until Aleksandra fell apart around it.

Her whole body went slack, and for a moment Aleksandra was barely able to keep herself upright on the bed. One hand held onto a shelf on the wall for dear life while the other ran through Angela’s hair, simple shaking strokes while she came down from the rush still working through her body. When Angela drew back, she was licking her lips dry, gazing at her all the while, and sighed happily as she pulled Aleksandra down beside her.

“You’re still shaking, are you cold?” Angela asked.

Aleksandra wrapped her arms around Angela’s waist and curled toward her. “No.”

She wasn’t sure where Angela had produced the blanket from, but it was no cause for complaint. Angela gently curled a few locks of her hair as the candles around them burned down, leaving only the flickering embers in the hearth for light. All the tightly-wound pressure in her had given way to an insistent heaviness, tugging her toward sleep. Somehow she doubted Angela would mind her staying the night.

⁂

The first thing Aleksandra noticed when she woke up was that she wasn’t in her home. The second thing she noticed was that it was freezing.

She gasped and tugged the blanket tighter around herself, but her fingers and toes already felt like ice. Wherever her nightclothes were, none of them were on her, and she looked around to get a grip on her surroundings until she remembered the previous night.

“Oh, I’m sorry, the fire went out. I don’t notice the cold much, myself.”

Aleksandra turned toward the voice, toward Angela at the counter as she flicked two fingers toward her hearth. The fire inside blazed to life and filled the little cottage with heat far faster than it should have. With the worst sting out of the air, Aleksandra sat up and grabbed at her clothes, neatly folded on a small table beside the bed. There was the look Angela was giving her, but she could focus on that once she wasn’t chilled to the bone.

“Warm now?” Angela asked once Aleksandra had gotten her clothes back on. She nodded. “I know it gets bitter out here without any fires…well. Good morning.”

“Better evening,” Aleksandra said. Angela snickered and set two plates down at the table.

“It would be hard to disagree with that. Come on, don’t sit in bed all day, come and eat. I’ll have your warriors burning my forest and breaking down my door if I don’t get you back hale and hearty.”

“Surely they trust me more than that.”

Aleksandra took one of the seats and began cutting the meat on her plate, but a pleasant twinge running through her chest kept her from getting too focused. “I—would it be silly to thank you?” she asked. Angela shrugged.

“Everyone likes to know their work is appreciated.”

The end of her knife twirled on the plate while Aleksandra tried to find words that were good enough. “Then thank you.”

Angela had a surprisingly sedate morning routine, Aleksandra discovered as she went about it with her. She cleaned a bit, arranged the things she would make for supper, and brought firewood in from a stack against the outside wall of her cottage.

“Why do you do this?” Aleksandra asked. “You said you don’t feel the cold.”

“But you do.”

When everything had been completed to her satisfaction, Angela sighed and planted her hands on her hips. “Usually I don’t finish my chores until the afternoon. Thank you for your help, my little battlemaster.”

“One of these days you might notice that I’m much bigger than you,” she countered, only for Angela to smirk and shake her head. “I should get back before they start to worry, shouldn’t I?”

“Yes. You should not neglect your duties for me, I do not want any risks to their safety hanging over your head or mine.”

“Come back with me,” Aleksandra said suddenly, speaking even before she had realized what she wanted to say. “You shouldn’t have to hide yourself away over someone else’s misdeeds. And I have too many people eager to meet this mysterious counselor who’s helped me so much.”

A flash of sadness crossed Angela’s face, and she folded her arms over her chest. “No, I shouldn’t have to…I also need to teach you how to reciprocate properly instead of falling asleep.”

Aleksandra’s whole face flushed red. “Ah—that too.” She took a step onto the path out of the woods and offered one hand. “Please don’t make me beg again. I won’t like it, but I will.”

“Perhaps I should waver, I do so love the sound of you begging,” Angela said slyly, drawing up another blush. She took Aleksandra’s hand. “I suppose one afternoon couldn’t hurt.”


End file.
